Well, in a way it is comforting to see you are maintaining the scale and range of your endeavours. When people in public talk like that book, they get rounded up by social services, you know, and put on meds.

I can only infer that you style yourself a Most Collectible Varlet, Rapaire. If so, I commend you on your collectibility and hope that some distant traveler collects you in the near future. And congratulations on discovering your Inner Varlet nature, and your MCV status.

"In recognition of your devoted contribution and outstanding service to the making of the 2007 Field of Heroes...."

The FoH is a project of the various local veterans' service organizations. A white cross, with a name, rank and date of death, is placed in cemetery order for everyone killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. It makes quite a show, and brings the casualties home with a gut punch.

Pocatello is the only city in the US that does this on this scale.

So, the vets' groups wanted to film it -- the Library of Congress had asked them for a video of it.

I said that the Library would pay $500.00 for one of the videos. That was the opening bid and enough was raised to do the videotaping. Unfortunately, there isn't enough to do more than to make the rough cut DVD of 15 minutes. More money (about $5,000) is needed.

I think that they gave me the award because the Library has the center for finding grants and they want me to find the five grand.

Ah, well, sorry Mom. I'm afraid that I imbibed a little of that "special" egg nog of yours. The stuff you keep in the 'fridge behind the leftover turnip-bone marrow casserole. Got a little giddy from it, I guess. It was a big day yesterday, what with three meetings and dropping off the form for the colonoscopy and getting a award and all. I really didn't mean drink some of your egg nog. I mean, there it was, sitting there at the very back of the shelf behind the casserole and the eggplant fritters and the marinated squid tentacles and those "potatoes" Amos dug up in the cemetery back in early March, and I just thought it was regular milk I could have with my cookies before I went to bed, you know? Anyway, I slept well.

Yes, and there's a lot of it too. Just look on the bottom shelf of the fridge, way in the back. It was pretty good, except for the hen's teeth in it which gave it a sort of gritty texture. And between you and me I think she put in too much strawberry jelly.

Hen's teeth will improve ANYTHING. I once made a family speciality, creamed tuna on mashed potatoes and that was when I learned to drain the oil off the tuna before using it for anything. But I sprinkled some hen's teeth on it and it tasted like a wonderful chateaubriand with bernaise sauce.

Speaking of which, has anyone else seen "Ratatouille"? It's a simply wonderful movie! I would not have thought such a charming movie could be made about a rat. I would give it 10 out of 10 stars. It is the rare thing, a perfect movie...about the rare thing, a perfect chef.

Within the spectrum of mainstream American English intonations, they can easily be found to rhyme. Thus, you are a provincial babbit, or a curmudgeonly grinch, or perhaps merely an over-extended arlet-vay, for saying such things.

What are you trying to do, LH? Get me killed or worse? Amos is, like, BIG Amos. He RUNS everything from the Mexican Border north all the way to somewhere around, oh, Fresno. He could put out a contract to have me whacked and I'd be dead or something within a few years or more.

Oh, gawdammit!! Now my secret is out on this thread. I'll have to change my gawdamn name or sompn. You have no idea WHO reads this thread. CIA, FBI, Legionairres, Spaw's possum and the flatulent Rick brothers... it's just too risky.

Yeah, well, you know how it goes. One day you're Mr. Big and the next day.... Reminds me of The Sarge over at the Legion Hovel. Never had any other name anyone knew, just The Sarge. Stood about six-eight in his stocking feet and used to make a living bending two-inch rebar with his bare hands for construction companies. Well, one day he'd drunk a couple of kegs and decided to do a little target practice at the Legion's Shooting Range.

So he pulled out his shootin' iron, which in this case was a sawed-off 105mm howitzer mounted on a Smith and Wesson pistol frame. And he fired off the first round and it kicked itself right out of his hand! This had never happened to The Sarge before and he figgered he was losing his touch. Tore him up inside real bad. He put up his shootin' iron and never touched it again. Said that a man who couldn't handle his firearms didn't have much left to live for. He drank another couple of kegs and joined the local monastery, the Abbey of Saints Dismas and Mary Magdalene and devoted the rest of his life to Good Works and self-flagellation, in that order. After a couple of years he'd shrunk down to four-foot three inches and had a hard time ripped the toilet paper off the roll.

About 4 weeks ago I was the hittee in an extremely minor hit-and-run accident. I wouldn't have stood in the rain for 90 minutes waiting for the cops to come if I hadn't been so pissed off. But i did, so a police report was filed. It is just one more scrape on my old, beat-up car, so I'm not even going to file an insurance claim.

However, it apparently has made it to the public record now. Over the past two days my mailbox has been inundated with 17 solicitations from law firms to file personal injury suits.

If you did that, sirrah, you would cross the 0th parallel and end up as East as could be. Only if his thinking were completely backwards would he try to reach me by traveling East... not to rule anything out, of course ... It hazard your many time-warp trips have strained your orientation. Or you have left your head, inverted, somewhere dark in your travels. That might account for it...

crossing the Zeroth not withstanding - one would still be traveling west to reach rapaire from you - and as said before, nearly 360 degrees west of you. But you are only a few degrees west of Rapaire - therefore he is more west.